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Arab and Muslim Americans: The New “Others”

Over the last month, GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s counterterrorism policy prescriptions have included creating a database of Arab and Muslim Americans, and more recently, a call for a ban on all Arab/Muslim immigration to the United States. While he has yet to call for the creation of WW II-style ethnic/religious concentration camps for our Arab/Muslim American neighbors, at this point nothing seems beyond the pale for Trump. Unfortunately, as I have noted before, when it comes to stigmatizing–if not de facto demonizing–Arab/Muslim Americans, he’s getting some help from DHS, DoJ, and the legislative branch.

Indeed, in the ongoing legislative battle to pass dubious cybersecurity legislation, House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-TX) is being wooed to support the revised cyber information sharing bill with a new carrot: the inclusion of his “countering violent extremism” (CVE) bill in the FY16 omnibus spending bill–a measure condemned earlier this year by civil society groups from across the political spectrum.

To date, McCaul has been opposed to the Senate’s approach to cybersecurity issues in the form of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), and, keeping that in mind, House and Senate supporters have largely excluded him from their negotiations over a final cyber bill. By dangling the inclusion of his CVE legislation in the omnibus is a clear effort to get McCaul to drop his opposition to CISA by giving him one of his priorities: Passage of CVE legislation would create yet another bureaucracy in DHS to essentially monitor the Arab/Muslim American population for signs of extremism.

The fact that a similar CVE effort in the U.K. failed miserably has not deterred Congressional boosters like McCaul from pursuing that same discredited approach at the expense of the civil and constitutional liberties of a vulnerable minority population. Additionally, the expense of American taxpayers is likely to be at least an additional $10 million per year for the proposed DHS CVE office.

As former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw reminded us this week, Arab and Muslim Americans have died for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have paid for our freedom with their blood and their lives. Proposals that would strip them of their rights and attempt to turn them into political and societal lepers should be repudiated–vocally and forcefully. Those who propose such un-American and unconstitutional discrimination are the ones who should be shunned and permanently confined to the unhinged fringes of American political and social life.